OF THE EOMAN EMPIKE 317 While the emperor and his court enjoyed, with sullen pride, second iiege the security of the marshes and fortifications of Ravenna, they^eGo^- abandoned Rome almost without defence to the resentment of Alaric. Yet such was the moderation which he still preserved or affected that, as he moved with his army along the Flaminian way, he successively dispatched the bishops of the towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of peace and to conjure the emperor that he would save the city and its inhabitants from hostile fire and the sword of the Barbarians.-"^ These impending calamities were however averted, not indeed by the wisdom of Honorius, but by the prudence or humanity of the Gothic king ; who employed a milder, though not less effectual, method of conquest. Instead of assaulting the capital, he successfully directed his efforts against the Port of Ostia, one of the boldest and most stupen- dous works of Roman magnificence.-'^ The accidents to which the precarious subsistence of the city was continually exposed in a winter-navigation and an open road had suggested to the genius of the first Caesar the useful design which was executed under the reign of Claudius. The artificial moles which formed the narrow entrance advanced far into the sea and firmly repelled the fury of the waves, while the largest vessels securely rode at anchor within three deep and capacious basons, which received the northern branch of the Tiber, about two miles from the ancient colony of Ostia. ^^ xhe Roman Port insensibly swelled ^ Zosimus, 1. V. p. 368, 369 [50]. I have softened the expressions of Alaric, who expatiates in too florid a manner on the history of Rome. [It was now that Alaric offered to be content with Noricum, see above, note 84.] 91 See Suetoi,. in Claud, c. 20, Dion Cassius, 1. Ix. p. 949, edit. Reimar [c. 1 1], and the lively description of Juvenal, .Satir. xii. 75, tk.c. In the sixteenth century when the remains of this Augustan port were still visible, the antiquarians sketched the plan (see d'Anville, M6m. de I'Acad^mie des Inscriptions, torn. xxx. p. 198) and de- clared with enthusiasm that all the monarchs of Europe would be unable to execute so great a work {Bergier, Hist, des grands Chemins des Romains, torn, ii; p. 356). 92 The Ostia Tiberina (see Cluver. Italia Antiq. 1. iii. p. 870-879) in the plural number, the two mouths of the Tiber, were separated by the Holy Island, an equi- lateral triangle, whose sides were each of them computed at about two miles. The colony of Ostia was founded immediately beyond the left or southern, and the Port immediately beyond the right or northern, branch of the river ; and the dis- tance betv/een their remains measures something more than two miles on Cin- golani's map. In the time of .Strabo, the sand and mud deposited by the Tiber had choked the harbour of Ostia ; the progress of the same cause has added much to the size of the Holy Island, and gradually left both Ostia and the Port at a con- siderable distance from the shore. The dry channels (fiumi morti) and the large estuaries (stagno di Ponente, di Levante) mark the changes of the river and the efforts of the sea. Consult, for the present state of this dreary and desolate tract, the excellent map of the ecclesiastical state by the mathematicians of Benedict XIV. ; an actual survey of the Agro Romano., in six sheets, by Cingolani, which contains 113,819 rubbia (about 570,000 acres) ; and the large topographical map of Ameti in eight sheets. [Cp. Procopius, B. G. i. 26 ; Cassidorius, vii. 9 ; and the description of Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, Eng. tr., i. p. 400.]
